Our view: 60 years is a long — but not so long — time
Published 6:35 am Wednesday, March 5, 2025
Six decades is a long time.
But 60 is also a significant number of years to not only not forget, but to remember.
On March 7, 1965, civil rights protestors were beaten by police and vigilantes as they crossed the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma — against orders that had come from the governor’s office to allow no violence that day.
But this simple observation doesn’t come near to describing what actually took place.
The severity of the beatings, including of women and children, and the ensuing carnage earned the name Bloody Sunday as many protestors were rendered injured and bloodied, and in many cases, unconscious.
Two days later, when Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. led about 2,500 undeterred protestors back to the bridge, marchers were again threatened with guns, tear gas and billy clubs. They turned back.
It wouldn’t be until March 21, under federal protection of 1,000 military policemen and 2,000 Army troops, that protestors were allowed to continue the journey to Montgomery. This they did, and in great numbers. Nearly 25,000 peopled entered the capital on the final section of the march, making it to the entrance of the Alabama State Capitol building bearing a petition for Gov. George Wallace.
Although the historic Civil Rights Bill had been signed a year earlier, in 1964, it did not guarantee voting rights. It took this march and the ensuing violence that unfolded before the rest of the nation for Congress to pass the Voting Rights Act. President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the document — legislation designed to eliminate a century of unconstitutional discrimination by eradicating barriers at state and local levels preventing Black men and women their right to vote under the 15th Amendment — on Aug. 6, 1965.
Six decades is a long time. But it’s not so long that many of us were either alive at that time or are just a generation removed.
Sixty is a significant number of years: To not only remember, but to not forget.
